So much for the theory that the Church of the Middle Ages
didn't know the Eucharist was visionary plants, a theory that is all too
favored by the over-extreme rabidly anti-Christianity entheogen scholars who
wish to tell a story of 2000 long years of complete darkness and suppression.
Against that false story driven too much by black-and-white moral tale or
counter-moralizing that overshoots its mark and swings the pendulum too far,
the evidence forces us to assume that the Church to a significant extent was
conscious that the Eucharist was visionary plants.

So it is time to go back and rewrite the story that the entheogen
scholars have been trying to tell so far. The moral is, as I have always
pointed out, the way to win the battle is not to pose it as a good-guys vs.
bad-guys us-vs.-them high-school vulgar oversimplistic battle. The way to win
is to prove that Christianity has always really been based on the use of
visionary plants, even within the official tradition.

Basically, the bishops (some of the important bishops and
others) knew and understood full well that the Eucharist was visionary plants:
a good number of bishops knew it, a good number of monks/religious knew it, a
good number of lay knew it. This wrecks and makes hash out of the
too-accustomed story of the entheogen scholars that the big bad Church was the
opposite of entheogen use.

The real story is not nearly so simple and clear-cut
black-and-white, all-or-nothing. Per the maximal entheogen theory, we ought to
do the opposite and assume that Christianity was always, everywhere, for
everyone, consciously and matter-of-factly entheogenic -- and then only back
down from that maximal assumption as we are forced to do so by the negative
evidence.

An uncomprehending and blunt blanket hatred of Christianity
is not the way to win the entheogenic case. The way to win is to enter the
belly of the beast and reveal the great extent to which it has always been
knowingly entheogen-driven.

There are many more instances; see for example Entheos Issue 1.As Panofsky writes, “The Plaincourault fresco
is only one example ... of a conventionalized tree type, prevalent in
Romanesque and early Gothic art, which art historians actually refer to as a
‘mushroom tree’... there are hundreds of instances exemplifying this
development... ”.

I walked into a used bookstore and found all these clear,
ideal examples of mushroom trees and blatant mushrooms in the first 10 minutes.
In this bookstore visit, it took only 10 minutes to gather 9 strong examples of
mushroom portrayals in Christian art, thus successfully calling into question
the familiar assumption that "visionary plants are rare in Christian
art". I'm not counting the many Datura-lilies seen in this visit.

Mushroom-shaped and mandrake-shaped Eden trees, with mushroom-shaped grape
clusters on the ground in between.Found
at http://pharmacratic-inquisition.com/nontesters/pharmacratic/
– “Adam and Eve with serpent-entwined Psilocybe mushroom (caduceus). Italy
[Abbey of Montecassino]; circa 1072 - British Library”.Mandrake is chemically similar to Henbane and
Belladonna.Mandrake drawings
traditionally show a human body instead of the tree trunk shown here.

Emile Mâle (Dora Nussey, tr.), The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century
(Icon Editions Series).1913 title of
the initial English translation of the 3rd French edition: Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century: A Study in Medieval
Iconography and Its Sources of Inspiration, http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0064300323
(Amazon shows the full text but not the images).

Page 3 shows a Chartres
stained-glass window with several mushroom trees -- including a plain and
starkly clear literal representation of a psilocybin-shaped mushroom, shown
below.This is a small portion of a very
large window with many clear mushroom depictions.The book shows a sharp, black and white
close-up of this portion of the window, which is representative of the other
parts of the window.

Information from the book: “Fig. 1.-- The Sky, Water, and
Trees. From the Legend of St. Eustace. Window at Chartres.”

The book presents black-and-white renderings of
stained-glass windows.

275“Legend of St.
Eustace (first part, window at Chartres),
p. 276 second part, 277 third part

The above is a portion of the window, shown below.Imagine the same detail and sharpness for the
whole window.

Page 16 of the same book shows a stained-glass window with a
couple fairly good mushroom trees, below.

Information from the book: “Fig. 8.-- Gideon and the Fleece
(window at Laon) (From Florival and Midoux, by permission of M. de Florival).

This is a scan of the black-and-white rendering in the book:

The 2nd from the left looks like several Christian mushroom trees.

Canterbury Psaltery Showing Cluster of Mushroom
Fruiting-Bodies

The below is from the Canterbury Psaltery, early 12th C.It appears in Marc Lachieze-Rey and
Jean-Pierre Luminet, Celestial Treasury:
From the Music of the Spheres to the Conquest of Space, 2001, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521800404,
page 178.

Selected areas of the illustration:

The object held in the hand below the red ball matches the white mushroom in
the mushroom tree on the right:

Information from the book: "Fig. 23 - Eusebian
Letter with Portrait of Eusebius, by the First Painter, 1300-07. Los Angeles, University
of California, University
Research Library, Special Collections, Armenian MS 1, p. 4 (cat. 36)."

Scan of a photocopy of the black and white rendering in the
book:

Below, page 45 shows a mushroom tree in the lower right:

Information from the book: "Fig. 24 - Eusebian
Letter with Portrait of Carpianos, by the First Painter, 1300-07. Los Angeles, University
of California, University
Research Library, Special Collections, Armenian MS 1, p. 5 (cat. 36)."

Page 93 has the illustration just in black and white, of the
illustration used for the cover of Bible Review, October 2001, the giant
Amanita-cap Last Supper table shown at my page entheogenpicfinds.htm
- "Last Supper around an Amanita-cap table". The mushroom is hardly
perceivable in this merely black-and-white rendering -- color is essential in
cases such as these.

I also have a color photocopy of an Eden cycle showing the
tree as generally the same type as a mushroom tree: once the 'mushroom tree'
idea was standardized, it was sometimes expressed very subtly: not recognizable
by a cap shape, but rather, by the grouping of all the leaves in some shape at
the top, and with two cut-off arms -- branch-stubs, leaving a bare or near-bare
trunk that, as a result, indicates a mushroom stem. One color picture in this
book shows birds nesting in such a loosely portrayed single-top mushroom-tree
that doesn't have cap-shaped top, but more of just a circle-top.